Opinions on Everything

Shee and I decided to play golf today after work on this beautiful sunny afternoon. It was 16 bucks to walk at twilight which was a pretty good deal. The course was pretty shitty but at least I got to swing the club a little bit. I striped a ball down the middle on hole 1 and played to a reasonable level throughout the round. I only used my driver one time and hit a monster 300 yard drive which makes me 1 for 1 on good drives. My contact for the day was decent and I wasn’t hooking everything which is encouraging. The Shee and I had a pretty amazing battle with some improbable putts going in to keep things interesting. With a Dallesandro’s cheese steak on the line there was no holding back. I ended up prevailing which I’m sure the Shee wasn’t too happy about but we had a good time and played 16 holes in 2 hours for 16 dollars which is good value from a golf standpoint.

I’m gonna give 4 picks for the games tomorrow and give a few teams who I hope to see go far.

- I really like Vanderbilt against Harvard and also making a deep run. They are coming off of a SEC tourny victory with a strong win against Kentucky and they lost a lot of close games to give them the 5 seed.

- I wouldn’t be surprised to see NC state play Belmont in the second round and then NC state coast to the sweet 16. NC lost a close one against UNC in the ACC tourny and I think that should give them a lot of respect as an 11 seed. They are in a good conference and most of their losses are against good teams so them over SD state wouldn’t surprise me.

- I like VCU over Wichita State because they have final 4 experience from last year. They won their sub par division and don’t play a lot of good teams so I think their ranking is sort of questionable because they don’t play strong teams. I think they are better than they seem. Plus Wichita St isn’t from a great conference either so this game will be closer than it seems.

- FSU will be my wildcard. I’m fairly certain not everyone will take them to go to the final 4 and this team plays with all the best teams in the ACC and I have confidence that they will give Ohio St a tough game. I have a feeling the big 10 isn’t as good as they seem.

The group caught a BBQ bus at around 7am to prepare for a tour of an area of New Zealand called Milford Sound. A sound is a like a fjord which is like a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity. I know you are probably asking what the hell is a BBQ bus but that is easily explained. Our tour bus had a bbq grill behind it that is used to cook lunch. Cheesy I know and you’d think that it would bring down the experience but you’d be wrong. We made a lunch stop at an awesome area on a picture perfect day and I’d say it was as close to paradise as I’ve come. Our guide was also very knowledgeable of the area and did a good job of explaining various scenes. We also spent about 6 hours on a bus driving through vast open areas of hills and mountains where there were thousands of sheep and cattle. There is no point to describe what we saw in words at the sound so I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. For some reason I also can’t remember what we did for the evening but nothing sticks out to me as being spectacular. This was a long day that led to an early night.

I woke up on Thursday feeling pretty good. We decided to go to a town called Arrowtown which was about 20 minutes away. It’s a tough place to describe. It’s small but very touristy. Lots of little shops with overpriced goods. It was about 11am and we went to a place to eat some breakfast where I ordered my first beer (I already ate breakfast). We walked around a little bit and took a hike through the area. Nothing really to note as the hike wasn’t too exciting and neither was the town. We made a reservation at a winery, Amisfield, for 2:30 and got there a bit early to eat. We ordered four portions that contained some zucchini, some lamb, some tropical fish and something I can’t remember. The food was a bit overpriced considering the portions served. We got a few pictures of the place below.

After the winery we decided to rent some bikes and ride around the lake. This was probably the first time I rode a bike in years. It comes second nature like expected and the route was pretty interesting. There were parts where you had to “hike with a bike” because the trails were too rocky. Amazing scenery though. We then went up a path to the Remarkable’s where I think we probably took some of the best pictures. I think we ate a pub food dinner and called it an early night because we had to wake up at 6 tomorrow for the BBQ bus to Milford Sound.

Today was my first full day of work in 7 days and I must say I feel like I’m back in America. After 7 consecutive stress free days my drive to work consisted of 4 yellow lights that made me slam on the brakes in aggravation. There was 1 light in Queenstown, NZ. Being back drops me in a routine which I’m used to. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but to make sense of the situation you just have to look at the word balance. I tell people from time to time that if you want to sound really intelligent just say that whatever it is has to be in balance. It works in so many ways and in this particular one it is describing that you have to work to enjoy your play. Neither working or playing all the time is healthy. There must be a balance. I do have a hint of sadness though that it’s all over and here I am back to this real life instead of fantasy land. It’s hard to really delve into the feelings I have about being back because I saw a world where work was secondary to living life and I liked it. Obviously it isn’t always like that but it was for this particular vacation and that’s where good memories come from. We as Americans don’t take long, extended vacations. Europeans go for “holiday” weeks at a time to experience exactly what I did for a week. What I got to do was step back and look at my world from a macro sense and feel what your money can buy you. Now I’m back trying to make money until the next trip…

The stupid thing I did on the first night was clean my contacts with my Mom’s hard contact cleaner. I did this to only one of the contacts and tried to clean it off with regular solution but the damage had been done. As I put the contact in my eye it created a huge burning sensation and I was practically blinded for a period of time. I kept cleaning it off and it seemed to get better but little did I know what I was in store for. I managed to go on a run with blurry vision around the lake and everything seemed to be getting better. The hills in New Zealand are ridiculous and have inclines that go on for hundreds of yards at a time which makes them virtually impossible to run for long distances. After the run we went with Nicole to plan a sightseeing trip at Milford Sound. At this point my eye started killing and I had to remove (and lose) the contact completely which was a tenuous situation because I only brought one extra contact on the trip which was incredibly fateful because who the hell brings one contact on a trip? The craziest thing about the situation was that my eye was killing and for some reason my nose wouldn’t stop running which went on for what seemed like hours. You can only imagine how much fun I was to be around at lunch. Comments included “You look like death” – Jeff, “It looks fine” – Laura, “Do you need an eye patch?” – My mom. Fortunately I found an optometrist who took a minute to make sure there was no damage done and I got lucky he was so nice and saw me right away. He said it would get better and I went back to the room to get a few hours of rest.

When I woke up my eye was almost normal and I was ready for the night. We went to the Casino for dinner which had a 2 for 25 deal and the food was decent. After dinner we headed to a bar called the Bunker for a few more drinks (pictures below). Nance went home after that and Jeff, Laura, Nicole, and I went to Harry’s to meet up with some of Jeff and Nicole’s friends who were having a pajama party. Oddly enough, they were the only people there wearing pajamas and nobody really seemed to notice or care. We threw back a couple bourbon shots and played a few games of pool before heading off to another bar. An interesting note was that the locals had this American football that unscrewed and acted like a flask which stored a decent amount of vodka. It was a great disguise for sneaking alcohol into the bar. At the next bar there was this French guy who got Jeff to say that “he was gay” while Jeff was practicing his French. It was pretty funny because Frenchie was by himself and completely hammered.

After this bar we went back to the casino to play some blackjack. The bouncer at the door wasn’t going to let me in because my one eye looked beat red and apparently I was swaying. I was pretty drunk at this point but no where near TC drunk and the supervisor eventually let me in. Jeff and I lost 80 bucks each before we had our final stop of the night in front of a random bar where I struck up a conversation with a Brit. He was telling me how awesome America was and I had to be joking that I didn’t know that America was the best country in the world. After that Nicole got a courdon blue for some unknown reason and something you wouldn’t see in America happened in the convenience store. A drunk guy came waltzing in being loud and knocked over a display and no employee in the store even waved a finger or said anything. It was like it wasn’t a big deal and he quietly cleaned it up and left. After that I went back to the hotel at about 2-3am and got ready for Day 3.

On Sunday 3/4/12, Laura, my Mom and myself were scheduled to catch a plane out of Philadelphia to LAX, and then from LAX to Auckland, NZ. Sam drove us to the airport and for some reason I had some anxiety about leaving. This was fairly off for me considering this was a complete pleasure activity and there was nothing to be nervous about. We got to LAX without a hitch and went through the Tom Bradley International airport to catch the flight to Auckland. This was a 13 hour flight and would require some resilience. I hate taking dumps on the airplane or airport so I essentially just held it the entire way. The plane to Auckland was pretty nice because each person had a TV with a huge database of movies, TV shows, and games to kill time. I also finished the 2nd Hunger Games book on the plane which I thought was a pathetic remake of the first book. The food on the plane was decent but it can certainly wear you down when you are constantly snoozing in and out of sleep over the course of the ride. We arrived at Auckland on a perfect sunny day and from there we had to catch a flight to Queenstown where Jeff was staying. The first things I noticed in Auckland was that the bathrooms were spotless and people drove on the other side of the road. The person checking in our bags was a Maori tribal member and brutally slow which I thought might be a trend here. We arrived in Queenstown at 2pm on TUESDAY. Remember we left Philly at 4pm on Sunday.

Since we weren’t operating with any phone we thought we might have some problems locating Jeff and Nicole. Luckily the timing was great and we found them a few minutes after retrieving our bags. Jeff had to work til 6 so we checked into our hotel which was about a 10 minute drive from the airport. The hotel was very modern and there was no difference between it and an American hotel. We had some time to kill so we decided to walk into the city and look around. We chose a Irish pub right on Lake Wakatipu for lunch. Being complete foreigners we weren’t exactly sure how to approach being served. This isn’t America where you sit down and a waitress brings you your food. We sort of stumbled on the idea of ordering our food at the bar and them bringing it to us when it was ready. I had the special “turkey club sandwich” for 12 dollars which was a tiny sandwich sliced into 4 parts. It tasted fine but this was a tip off of what prices were going to be like for what you get. The bill was something like 33 dollars and my Mom gave the woman 40. She gave us back 7 dollars change and my mom wanted to leave the 7 dollars for a tip. This was a sure sign that you were a foreigner as they don’t tip on any meals.

We did some shopping to kill some more time until Jeff got off work and we met up with them at a restaurant called Lonestar. Our server to start at Lonestar was a complete Kiwi (a New Zealand local) and I could hardly understand him. I ordered a supercold Stienlager which I’m not sure why everything they served wouldn’t be supercold. Laura ordered a “great” tasting drink that she took about 90 minutes to half finish. Another funny thing was when they asked if we wanted a “loaf” and Jeff was like sure we’d like bread. This was a sneaky way of charging the table for a 9 dollar loaf. This particular meal was pretty high priced and let us know what we didn’t want to do for the rest of the days. After dinner Laura and my mom headed back to the hotel and Jeff, Nicole, and myself went next door to shoot some pool. The other local drink was Monteith’s at the bar and they were 5 dollars each which was a good deal. We shot a 2 dollar game or two and called it a night. I was pretty zapped from the plane ride and was happy to get a good night’s rest. I took my contacts out and did something really stupid which set the tone for day 2.

I’ve arrived back in the States after a week long trip to New Zealand. I’m contemplating how best to go about a trip report and I’ve decided to break it up in multiple segments. I’m going to use this post to describe my general thoughts on life in New Zealand and then use a few different posts to detail our trip. I have tons of pictures which we took and also quite a bit more from Nicole’s camera. If you’re her friend on Facebook you’ll probably have seen some, but for those who aren’t her camera will give better detail than mine. I want to add that I spent the last 24 hours traveling and I’m not sure how long it will take me to get detailed posts up, probably a few days. Considering this is probably one of the most exciting things I’ve done in a while, I recommend checking back over the course of the next short period of time for updates.

When your plane arrives in New Zealand you immediately realize the incredible nature of the scenery. It’s strikingly beautiful and nothing like I’ve ever seen before. We spent most of our time in Queenstown which is where Jeff and Nicole have found residence and the pic below gives you an idea of the city. There’s a huge lake in the middle and the town wraps around the lake.

Once you get past the beauty you have to adapt to the city and the people. Queenstown is more of a tourist attraction and it took quite a bit of getting used to how things are priced. The New Zealand dollar is a bit weaker than the US dollar but they make up for that by jacking up the price. Beers are the first thing to notice and a $5.00 beer is considered a very good deal. A 20oz bottle of water will run about $3.00. A major difference though in New Zealand is that there isn’t tipping. Meaning that the tip (and tax) is calculated in the price which also makes everything look super inflated. When you first get there and see a cheeseburger for $22 NZD you get a little dizzy. You start to get used to it but on a whole the US has significantly cheaper prices on mostly everything. It was odd seeing a $250 icebreaker sweatshirt and a $350 pair of Uggs.

The next thing I noticed was that there is much less “free” internet. Businesses aren’t handing out free wi-fi and I can only imagine that people aren’t streaming Netflix like here in the States. The TV is also on a much lesser scale from what we Americans are used to. I think our hotel had 10 channels or so and Jeff was used to getting 5. They don’t censor anything on their TV either which was interesting when Laura and I were watching Daisy of Love and they weren’t bleeping out F bombs. We hardly watched any TV though and I don’t think many people are as infatuated with it because there is so much outdoorsey things going on. I think this has it’s pluses and minuses. Another point of interest is that sports are cricket and rugby with a smattering of soccer.

The final thing which I’m going to write about in this post is that THIS IS THE LIFE. Although not a practical lifestyle for 7 days, this is exactly what I would want to do with my free time. We spent quality family time together, good exercise in hikes and biking, and the fact that I didn’t have my phone on me for 7 days was unbelievably liberating. You could live a long, stress free life this way. Just going on a run next to a lake with amazing rolling mountains in the background is such a better feeling than running on a treadmill or on the streets of Manayunk. I just felt alive climbing Ben Lomond and trips like this make you want to travel more. You work so you can spend time this way. No big screen TV could make up for this experience. It was a mere 7 days in a different country but this time spent and memories made will never be forgotten. I see what’s out there and now I know how good it can be. Here are a few pics below which might pop up in later posts.

This will most likely be my last post for about a week plus. My mom, my sister and myself are heading to New Zealand for a vacation to visit our brother Jeff and his girlfriend Nicole who has stopped updating her New Zealand blog. I have a camera and will take plenty of pictures and will hopefully come back with tons of stories and interesting facts about the kiwis. I’m very excited for a week off with nothing to do but take in the sights of a foreign land and enjoy myself. I believe this would be referred to as “living the life”. I’m hoping that this will be such a good experience that I’ll be apt to turn myself into a worldly traveler. Lose this narrow mind set that the world lies within the United States.

The plane ride is 5 hours to LAX and then 15 hours to Auckland. This is obviously a lot of time on the plane so I’m prepared to finish the Hunger Gamers series and hopefully start the Fountainhead. These are such drastically different books that I’ll start with the teenage ones and work up to a real piece of literature. I’ve felt foolish reading the Hunger Games in public for whatever reason. Tonight will be relatively low key because I have to feel fresh when traveling for all those hours. I don’t have too much else to comment on and will possibly write something mid week depending on how their computer system operates.

Anyone else find it odd that everyone doesn’t walk around in body armor? An indestructible body suit that would protect your from any projectiles, falls, crashes, and everything in between. I suppose it would be extremely costly, clunky, and completely unnecessary but I still think it at least should exist to the super wealthy. The more I think about this idea the more and more I’m re-creating Iron Man. So my initial idea for this post of all humans living with body armor in complete chaos because everyone would act so irresponsible and careless with their bodies turned into a bunch of Iron Men. He sort of steals all the thunder from this post. Still, a more obtainable body suit should still be available that guards you against the mistakes in life. You’d find people wearing it playing sports, driving automobiles, or WAR! When are we going to come to a day when bullets are rendered completely useless? Wars wouldn’t even be fought by people. This body suit should be the #1 priority of our scientists. Although technically if a nuclear war could wipe out massive amount of area, maybe they have bigger concerns.

Train – Drive By

Walk the Moon- – Anna Sun

Friends – Friend Crush

The Naked and Famous – Girls Like You

Gotye – Eyes Wide Open